Four Things EVERY Online Ad Must Do
By Anna Johnson on December 2nd, 2008Dr Ralph Wilson, writing in Web Marketing Today, says it well: there are four functions that EVERY online ad must perform in order to get a click- through. They are to:
- Attract interest
- Present the offer
- Select the audience
- Get the click-through
I would rearrange the list slightly – I think the ad should select or qualify the audience before presenting the offer. After all, the merits of your super-duper offer will likely fall on deaf ears unless your audience has a natural interest in the problem or desire addressed by that offer in the first place.
Having said that, the confines of many online ads are such that, technically speaking, you may well qualify your audience when or after you present your offer. Plus, if you have chosen your media appropriately, you will ideally, be directing your ad to an audience that is already qualified to some extent.
For example, if you have an offer that would appeal to Internet marketers, you’d be wise to run your ad in an Internet marketing newsletter like Kikabink News since it’s squarely aimed at Internet marketers.
On the other hand, if you were specifically directing your ad to Internet marketers who run home based businesses, you might qualify your audience with a headline such as “Discover The Secrets of Successful Home Based Internet Marketers…”
All in all, though, as Dr Wilson emphasizes in his article, your ad must do ALL four things to get the click-through. So when it comes to evaluating your ad before it goes live… ask yourself whether it really is doing each of those four things.
Source: Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, “4 Tasks Your Internet Ad Absolutely Must Accomplish”, Web Marketing Today
